


The Lift Away

by Ataraxetta



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trope Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:49:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3770587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ataraxetta/pseuds/Ataraxetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two and a half years later, Brian needs a place to lay low and recover. Dom has a spare bedroom. </p><p>He tells himself that that's all this is. What he had with Brian Spilner was over a long time ago. The miles of history between them are a road best left untraveled, and God knows how good Dom is at avoiding those, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lift Away

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya everyone! First FatF fic. Moseying on into this fandom like 13 years later sounded like a grand idea and I am probably in way over my head. *facepalm*
> 
> This takes place about nine months after 2 Fast ends, and follows the trope of Verone escaping prison and getting vengeance. Please note the warnings in the tags! The minor character death (Monica Fuentes from the second movie) has happened prior to the fic's beginning.
> 
> I think that's about it. I hope you enjoy!

**The Lift Away**

 

**o. prologue**

Tanner can't speak more than a few words of Spanish and gives exactly zero fucks about cars, so the only thing he knows about his rental is that it's a baby-puke green P.O.S. that a man of his size and stature was never meant to fit into. The air conditioning doesn't work and it's hot as balls — he's sweating in places he didn't even know he had — but it gets him from point A to point B as discreetly as possible. Which, considering he's white as white can be, isn't saying much.

He guides the little clown car down a narrow street that's tunneled by some overhanging trees and empty save for one house right on the beach four miles down the stretch. It's fenced in, a little more luxurious than Tanner was expecting, two stories with an open patio off the ground floor and a terrace on the second. It looks like cream-colored stucco, with red brick arched doorways and dark red tile on the patio. The yard is overgrown but not by much, clearly seen to regularly, and baskets of brightly colored flowers hang from hooks along the fence and the terrace. Two Civics, an Eclipse, and a Nissan Somethingorother are parked in the gravel drive. In the open garage beyond them there's a beat to shit pickup truck that was maybe red, once.

Tanner parks behind the Nissan, shuts the engine off and spends the next five minutes trying to unfold himself from the rental. His back twinges and his legs itch, slacks sticking to his skin. He tucks the toothpick he's chewing on between his two front teeth and swats a fly off his arm. It's easier to breathe outside of the car. It's breezy and cooler here by the water.

"Nice hat," says a deep, rumbling voice. Startlingly deep, even though Tanner's heard it before via audio feed. Dominic Toretto looks exactly the same as he did when Tanner was watching him through surveillance cameras at Harry's in L.A. Two and a half years haven't changed him much. Still built like a brick shithouse, still huge, and bald.

Tanner pulls off his aviators and taps the brim of his olive green hat. "Might want to look into getting one yourself. Skin cancer's a real threat, son."

Toretto lifts an eyebrow. Tanner's not sure where he came from — for all his bulk he moves like a jungle cat, approaching with easy footsteps that are silent even in the gravel — but he's wearing grease-stained jeans and a black tank top and no shoes, holding a pair of tongs and a bottle of water. He offers the water to Tanner, who can't help but be a little suspicious. Toretto tilts his head. "It's not drugged, cop."

Tanner frowns, but doesn't bother to deny it. "How'd you know?"

Toretto shrugs, folding his arms over his chest so the tongs stick out awkwardly on one side and the water bottle on the other, in as awkward as Toretto can ever really look. "You walk like a cop."

"Bullshit," Tanner says at once. He spends a lot of time around punk kids that think they're full of better shit than everyone else and it's his civic duty to call them on it. One corner of Toretto's mouth curls up into an amused grin. Doesn't do much to soften the hard look in his eyes, but it lets Tanner breathe a little easier. 

"Mia recognized you," Toretto says. Tanner takes the water with a grateful nod and downs half of it in one go. He met Mia briefly, when she was brought in for questioning after her brother fled, again in court when she testified against Lance Tran. He looks past Toretto to the house, sees her now watching them from what must be the back porch. 

"A little surprised you didn't haul ass," Tanner says.

Toretto lets out a low chuckle that's a little eerie and a lot irritating. "Not on your turf, Tanner. Don't need to run. Besides," he gives the ugly rental a long, judgmental look. "Don't think you came here to arrest anyone."

Tanner sticks his toothpick back in his mouth and twists the cap back onto the water bottle. "Nah, not here to arrest anyone. Not here as a cop."

"So what're you here for?" Toretto asks. "Got a feeling you didn't come for my homemade rub, either."

Tanner grins. It smells good, whatever they're grilling around back, and he can hear quiet conversation and laughter and the breeze rustle through the trees and the roll of the goddamn ocean right there. It's peaceful. It's an ideal spot, exactly what he came here for. The grin slides off his face. "Not quite." He gives Toretto a significant look. "Came to see you about a mutual acquaintance."

Toretto doesn't look so amused anymore, or nearly as relaxed, but Tanner can't tell if it's anger and ice or something else. _Controlled_ , O'Conner had said, when it was clear as day to Tanner that Toretto was as loose a cannon as they come and an open book of a hot head. That might be past tense, now. Toretto looks like he's grown up some, finally learned to keep himself in check. A little, at least. Enough that Tanner, who's real damn good at reading people, has no idea what's turning his cogs right now. Man may very well be planning on taking him inside and killing him quick. 

Not that it matters, because even if he has to do it spitting blood, Tanner's going to make Toretto listen whether he wants to or not. Be a hell of a nice thing if it went down easy, though.

Toretto clears his throat, tilts his head to the side until his neck pops with a gross crack, and then unfolds his arms and turns back toward the house. "C'mon. We've got enough to feed an army."

Shit. Toretto struts off like he's some kind of badass and Tanner rolls his eyes so hard they threaten to get stuck. He finishes his water, tosses his toothpick into the overgrown yard and fishes another one out of his pocket to replace it before he follows Dom inside.

The house seems smaller on the inside, but nicer, too. Three bedrooms and two full baths, Toretto tells him, a good sized kitchen and a tiny living room. There are framed photographs on the walls and the bathroom Tanner uses is clean and tastefully decorated. He hadn't looked too deep to check how long Toretto's been living here, but it's obviously been enough time to settle a bit. Tanner pisses and washes his hands, checks his face in the mirror where guilt and stress has got him pale and ugly, wonders what the hell he's doing and if it's the right thing. There's no easy answer, so he emerges into the hall and follows the path Toretto took through the kitchen and out a sliding glass door to the back patio.

The whole damn gang is there. Toretto's right hand grunt locks on as soon as Tanner steps outside, but beyond the vaguely threatening look Vince doesn't do anything, doesn't even stand from the picnic table he's sat at. He's got a scar on his arm and shoulder so ugly it turns Tanner's stomach, and when he looks away it's right to Letty Ortiz, and the look on her face is more unsettling than anything else he's encountered so far. The other guy, Leon, is a lot warmer.

"Hey, Sarge. How's L.A.?" he says in a voice almost as deep as Dom's that sounds strange with the friendly grin on his face. He's bringing a plate of ribs over from the grill where Toretto is holding court (well, squabbling with his sister, at the moment). Vince rolls his eyes and Letty shoots Leon a glare, but Tanner groans and drops into a seat on the bench across from Vince.

"Same old, same old. Taxes have gone up. Too much road work. Traffic sucks."

"Thought you'd just come down here to get away from it all?" Mia asks. She slides easy as you please into the seat next to him, leaving a healthy gap, and the sarcasm is unapologetic, but she doesn't look angry and on the brink of falling apart like she did the last time he saw her. There's still something calculating and volatile in her eyes, sure, but that might just be a family trait. Tanner shrugs.

"I had vacation time," he says.

Letty makes a sound like an angry cat. "Jesus fucking Christ, man, you've got balls of steel comin' here, you know that?"

"Letty, c'mon. He's our guest," Toretto chides as he joins them. He sets two more plates down on the table, which is already filled to bursting with dishes of vegetables and cornbread and rice and something yellow and grainy that Tanner's never seen before because he lives off frozen dinners. Letty shoots Toretto a furious look.

"What're you thinking letting him in here, Dom? What's this pig doing here?"

"I'm not so bad, as far as pigs go," Tanner says. "Definitely one of the better pigs."

Letty snarls. "Fuck you, man." 

"Lett, let it go," Mia murmurs.

Letty makes another angry noise but she takes it down to a simmer, waits until she can control her mouth before turning her attention back to Toretto. "You don't think this is a little suspicious?"

"I dunno," says Toretto, tossing napkins into the middle of the table. His gaze slides from Letty to Tanner, amused as all shit. "Should I be suspicious, Leland?"

Prick. Tanner ignores him in favor of Letty, who's holding a fork with a grip like it might end up embedded in Tanner's heart. "I'm just here to talk, Miss Ortiz."

She doesn't answer, just raises a perfect eyebrow and sizes him up, and it doesn't take a psych degree to know that she doesn't have any inkling of an interest in anything he has to say. It's Vince who leans forward, planting his elbows on the table all intimidating like. Fucking adorable. "So talk," he says.

Tanner's going to say no, because there's only one of them that he's willing to air this dirty laundry with, but Toretto beats him to it with a careless shake of his head as he finally takes a seat. He's heavy enough that the table trembles a little. "Nope. The sergeant's not feeling real chatty right now."

"Is that right?" Vince says, steel behind the drawl. "But that's what he came for, brother. Thought we were gonna have a conversation."

Toretto shrugs. "Nah. What we're gonna do is have a nice dinner." He pauses to open a bottle of beer as loudly as possible, because he's a fucking drama queen. "And after that all of you are gonna get lost so _he and I_ can have a conversation."

There's an instant uproar. Tanner's mildly fascinated, but mostly hungry, and the ball of stress that's tight in his chest is annoyed. Your twenties are hard, he reminds himself. Not a kid, not quite a grown up. He should be more patient with them. This whole family dynamic they've got going isn't something he's ever gonna understand anyway. He meets Leon's eyes across the table, and Leon shrugs, grins like this is a normal thing, and starts to fill his plate. Tanner decides he likes Leon best out of all of them, follows his lead and tucks into Toretto's admittedly delicious homemade rubbed ribs and some cornbread while they argue.

It goes on for about five minutes before Toretto shouts, "That's enough!" and they all go quiet, just like that. Luckily, Tanner is immune to feeling awkward, ever, and perfectly content in the sullen silence that follows.

 

 

How many of them are actually staying at Toretto's house is answered after dinner. Leon and Vince, who walks with a pronounced limp, embrace the other three before they pull the Eclipse and one of the Civics out of the drive and take off down the road back toward town. Letty helps clear the table, throws Tanner the filthiest look she can muster, and disappears into one of the bedrooms. Mia rolls her eyes with a sigh and sets the last of the empty plates in the sink. "You'll get these?"

"Yeah," Toretto answers. He's half in the fridge, voice muffled. He comes back with four beers, hands one to Tanner and two to Mia. "I'll clean up in a bit."

Mia nods, and heads for the same bedroom Letty walked into. She stops and turns back before going in. "You're here about Brian, right?"

Tanner nods. "Yes ma'am."

She gnaws on her bottom lip, eyes flashing somewhere between worried and pissed off. The former must win, because she asks, "Is he in trouble?"

That's a tough question with a complicated answer. Mia Toretto's strong as they come but she's been through hell of a lot due to other people's bad decisions, enough that Tanner doesn't want to answer it honestly and put that on her shoulders. He looks at Toretto, who gives him a frowning, searching look before turning soft eyes on his sister. He nods toward the closed bedroom door. "Go on. Let me find out."

Once she's gone he leads Tanner back outside, and they settle into two ugly wicker chairs with their beers and a cigar each. It's a hell of a sight better than a toothpick. The sun is starting to go down, and lights strung along the wooden fence start to glow. Tanner leans back in his chair, quiet. He lets the silence stretch. On one hand, he doesn't really know where to start. On the other, he's curious to see how patient Toretto really is. 

Not very, it turns out, because after only about a minute he says, "So what's up with O'Conner?"

One hell of a question. What the fuck is up with Brian O'Conner? Tanner's been asking himself that for a long time. He grins, but it kind of aches. He blows out a cloud of ugly smoke and tilts his head back to look at the sky. The stars go on for miles.

"You know how I met Brian?" he asks. Rhetorical, because of course Toretto doesn't. "I was working a joint jurisdiction case with San Bernardino county, about ten years ago. Four cars had been boosted, two from there, two in L.A., taken to a fence in Barstow with some stupid ass name, Q Top or some shit. We were pretty sure they were being used to transport cocaine, found out we were right when we nailed the fence. That part was easy, but it took us weeks to pin down the drivers."

"Shit," Toretto rumbles and Tanner chuckles.

Doesn't feel like it was so long ago, when he thinks about it, coming face to face with two fifteen-year-old punks with megawatt smiles and an unlimited supply of bullshit. "Finally got word of a couple of local kids. We knew they hadn't had a clue about the drugs that'd been stuffing the back seats, but they split as soon as we got close enough to run from. Led our boys on a high speed chase for nearly a hundred miles before one of 'em blew a tire and clipped the other one." 

"You the one that sent him to Juvie?" Toretto asks.

Tanner nods his head, remembering O'Conner and Pearce as he'd first known them, caught red-handed after a hell of a run and so goddamn charming they'd almost talked their way out of it by the time Tanner had arrived. They'd been separated at the station; the San Bernardino detective Tanner had been working with at the time had taken Pearce, and Tanner had gotten O'Conner. 

He'd read Brian's file while they'd been waiting for the child advocate attorneys to show up, and learned that Brian's parents had taken off when he was young. He'd grown up in the system, in and out of foster homes and in and out of trouble. It had taken all of ten minutes to figure out that Brian could lie easy as he breathed. He'd refused to rat out his friend in any circumstance, had tried to take on all the blame by virtue of Pearce being 'an idiot who was just doing what I told him to do', and when that didn't work he'd tried to con Tanner with some bullshit sob story about the fence they'd arrested coercing him and Pearce. 

Talking to him that day had been interesting as hell, and despite himself Tanner had been impressed. Brian was reckless, quick on the uptake, opportunistic, far too sharp for his own good and with more to lose than he'd thought he had. He'd sat in that interrogation room in Barstow for over eight hours, took a grilling that had been severe even by Tanner's standards, and save for the slight tremor in his hands he'd stayed cool as a cucumber. The ice hadn't melted through his arraignment, his sentencing, or all the way to Juvenile Hall. Tanner had felt for him, taken in by a kid in need. CPS notes had all pretty much agreed that Brian O'Conner was a handful, and they weren't wrong, but he'd been a handful with a lot of potential. That hasn't changed.

"Was good for him. Let him see that his actions have consequences." Tanner pauses just long enough to give Toretto a significant look that Toretto ignores. "I kept tabs on him. When he got out, he was going back to a shithole of a foster home and he was miserable, not that he said anything. Never says anything real out loud, you know?"

"Yeah," Toretto says, and there's a wry long-suffering in his tone that Tanner is too familiar with.

"But I knew he was unhappy, possibly enough to start making dangerous decisions again," Tanner says, "so I told him that if he could just stick it out two more years, graduate high school, he could get out of Barstow and come to L.A. I offered to recommend him for the academy, see about getting him a position on the force."

"Must've stuck," Toretto says, and Tanner hums a quiet agreement.

"I thought…" he trails off, shaking his head, lazily damning his 20/20 hindsight. "I figured it'd be enough of an adrenaline rush for him, being a cop. He could make detective faster than most. He was good at his job, and L.A. wasn't exactly a quiet little town. He could hone all that energy into something for the greater good. And he did, for a while. Was on his way up, would be the youngest officer to ever make detective." He goes quiet for a minute, plagued with all the things he could've done differently, and then heaves a bitter sigh. "He was doin' good. Real good, up until we assigned him to you."

Toretto's watching him, blank-faced except for the unimpressed lift of his eyebrow. "Should've known how it would pan out. You've known him since he was a kid. Put someone like O'Conner on a job like that, where he gets to drive? Drive one of _my_ cars? Give him back that rush? There was no way he'd settle for just a taste of that." He shrugs his big shoulders. "What did you expect him do?"

"Well I sure as shit didn't expect him to wind up in your bed, Toretto," Tanner drawls. Toretto tenses, which is satisfying as shit, thanks, and for a second there's real, brittle pain clear as day in his eyes. Good. Tanner's glad. Relieved. Powerfully relieved.

"Yeah, well," Toretto says into the stretching silence. He's suddenly mesmerized by his beer bottle. "He's better than most people at hiding things about himself, it turns out."

They're silent for a while. Tanner hasn't even said what he's come to say and he's exhausted by this conversation. His flight leaves early tomorrow, and he's got a room at a hotel by the airport, but that's a long drive he's not looking forward to. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips it open, stalling. He's got a text message that says _moving him out of ICU_. He snaps it shut. Toretto shifts in his chair, posture going defensive in a subtle way.

"I haven't seen or spoken to him since that day," he says. "He ain't been here. If you're lookin' for him I can't help you."

"I'm not looking for him," says Tanner. "I know where he is."

When he doesn't offer up more Toretto scrubs a hand over his face with an angry sound and then pins Tanner with a look far more intimidating than anything his buddy Vince could ever pull off. "Then what the hell're you doin here," he says, "except trying my patience?"

Tanner sets his cigar down in the ashtray and leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees, phone still clutched tight in his hand. "Did you follow up on him after that day? Know what he's been into?"

"No," says Toretto, and Tanner believes him.

"He ran, after you left. Wound up in Miami. Feds caught up with him there about nine months ago, offered him a deal to clear his name, another undercover gig. He didn't have a lot of options."

He fills Toretto in on the big picture: the stakes, Monica Fuentes and Roman Pearce, and Carter Verone. Toretto doesn't react much but Tanner's sure he's committing every detail to memory. He winds down the basics with, "Verone was arrested. O'Conner and Pearce's records were wiped clean."

"Sounds like a happy ending," Toretto says.

"Wrapped up nice with a pretty bow," Tanner agrees. He sits up again, takes off his hat and rings it around the neck of his beer bottle, combs his fingers through what's left of his hair. He hadn't thought enough about how he was gonna word all this. It's hard to talk about. 

Toretto says, "Look, as much as I'm enjoying storytime, you got a point you're gonna get to any time soon?"

It's not his fault, he doesn't know how serious this is, but Tanner wants to hit him anyway. If he'd seen the damn butcher shop they'd found Brian in, if he'd seen what had been done to him; he had no idea how big this mess was. Tanner takes a few deep breaths to make sure his voice is level when he speaks again. "Verone isn't your average greedy crime boss. Feds didn't realize what it meant, putting people in his path," he tells Toretto. "Man's a psychopath who holds grudges and likes to have the last word, and he busted out of a Florida prison a month ago yesterday."

Toretto puts two and two together and comes up with four. "He's got Brian?"

Brian. Not O'Conner, or Snowman, or whatever other bullshit name he and his buddies came up with. Tanner takes his eyes off the sky to look at him. Toretto's gone a dangerous kind of quiet. His posture's still lazy, he's still sat back in a languorous slump in his chair but his hands are fisted and white-knuckled on the arms. 

"Had," Tanner corrects. "He went after all three of them. Pearce was never caught, gave Verone's enforcers a run for their money and probably would've made it but took a bullet to the chest and flipped his car. Gunshot wound was clean but he suffered massive head trauma. He's in a coma. Fuentes is dead." 

He swallows back the bile that rises in his gullet, remembering how they found her. What was left of her. He doesn't elaborate.

"And O'Conner?" Toretto prompts, voice even lower than usual, maybe an attempt to hide the fear in it. Tanner clears his throat, the pressure in his chest making it a little harder to breathe. He can't offer much in the way of reassurance. He says, "Alive."

Toretto's brow furrows. He takes a moment, like he's choosing his words carefully. "How long?"

"Too long," Tanner mutters. He takes another pull off his drink. Everything tastes like ash. "Not quite sure how long he was with Verone, but he was MIA for eight days. Injuries severe but not life threatening."

"What about Verone?" Toretto says darkly.

Tanner gives him a sharp, unimpressed look, because vengeance isn't gonna do shit for anyone right now. "Got away. Wasn't there when we found them. Look, Torretto, leave the police work to the police, you got me? The less you know the better."

Toretto blinks big, dark eyes at him. "You came a long way to tell me I don't need to know anything."

"I came a long way because Brian's gonna be released from the hospital eventually, and he's gonna need somewhere to lay low," Tanner says. "They've got a safehouse set up, but I don't know who I can trust. It would be for the best if he disappears."

"You want to bring him here," Toretto says.

Tanner shows his hands, palms up in supplication. He's got no ulterior motives, though he knows that must be hard for a guy like Dominic Toretto to believe. "I don't know if Verone has plans to finish what he started, he had plenty of time if he'd wanted to kill him. And I don't know how much he really knows about Brian, or what happened in L.A., or you, but until the bastard's caught I can't think of a safer place." 

Toretto's mouth curls into a small, cold smile. "You seem to have forgotten the terms on which O'Conner and I parted ways. What makes you think he'd be safe with me?"

"Call it an educated guess," Tanner says. It's hard to put voice to a truth he doesn't himself much like, but he does it anyway. "He meant something to you, once. Reckon he still might." 

That gets no more than a grunt, but no denial, either, and Toretto looks away. _God save me from the moody and stubborn_ , Tanner thinks. He doesn't press anymore. There'd be no point and he's said all he's come to say. He slumps and stretches his legs out with a long sigh, tilting his head back to rest on the back of the chair, drifting in the quiet while Toretto broods and waiting for an answer that he's not gonna leave without.

When all this shit went down, when they first found Brian and Tanner realized that things had lined up in Verone's favor a little too easily, he'd entertained the thought of just taking off with him. He could make them disappear, leave no trail, find a bolt hole somewhere to look after him. Even as he'd considered it, he'd known he'd end up right here, having this conversation with Toretto. Tanner's fond as hell of O'Conner, cares about him, feels responsible for him the same way he did the mouthy teenager he met all those years ago, but when it comes down to it he's a good cop and a lousy criminal. Even after seeing Brian in the state Verone left him — and that will haunt Tanner until the day he dies — there are some things he's not willing to do, laws he's not willing to bend, sacrifices he's not willing to make.

Toretto's a whole different kind of animal, all pack mentality, and he falls hard. He _fell_ hard, for trouble with a capital T. Brian got under his skin and stayed there. He's harder to read than he was two and a half years ago but it's still crystal clear that all the time and bad blood between them hasn't done a damn thing to change that. Letting go has never been Toretto's M.O. He would scorch the earth for his family. Tanner's just hoping he still considers Brian part of it.

Hell, even if he doesn't, they're out of options. Even if Verone has no plan to come after Brian again, even if they catch the Fed mole that gave Brian up, the damage has been done. Brian's been cooperative, awake and talking and answering what questions he can, but he's unpredictable at the best of times and, despite all smiley appearances, traumatized in ways Tanner's not sure he'll ever come back from. He's angry, he's hurt, and he's scared shitless, and he's dealt with those kind of feelings by putting himself in positions to die easy for as long as Tanner has known him. They'll lose him. His world is collapsing around him and Toretto has the best chance of holding him steady through the inevitable downward spiral. Tanner doesn't have to know the details; he just wants Brian safe.

Eventually, after minutes or hours or days, Toretto lets out a frustrated growl and says, " _Fuck_ ," and then, "Fine," and then, "How soon can you get him here?" 

Tanner damn near weeps in relief. He feels boneless with it. "Thank you, Dominic."

"Fuck you, Tanner," says Toretto, and Tanner doesn't even bother to lift his head, just closes his eyes and flashes the sky a wide grin. 

It'll due. It'll have to.


End file.
